Why Man U?

Why So Many People Are Obsessed With Manchester United

United grew into a big English club, but for long it wasn’t particularly brilliant. From 1878 through 1955 it won just three English titles. United became different from other clubs on February 6, 1958, the day a twin-engine British European Airline plane crashed on its third attempt to take off from an icy Munich airport. On board was Manchester United’s team.The “Busby Babes,” named for their Scottish manager Matt Busby, had been a gifted young side playing glorious attacking soccer. Eight of the players — including the great 21-year-old Duncan Edwards — were among the 23 people killed in the crash. A tearful nation followed Busby’s own struggle for life in a Munich hospital. White writes that for those who now try to make money out of United, Munich is the “marketing core from which everything else has stemmed.” It became the first pillar of United’s global brand.Busby recovered, and with players bought from other clubs, United reached the FA Cup final that same May. He built a new team around Bobby Charlton (who, aged 20, had also been on the plane), Denis Law and George Best. Playing glorious attacking soccer, it crushed Benfica 4-1 in the European Cup final of 1968. Tragedy and rebirth had given United a story.The club then languished for 25 years, with only its violent “Red Army” of fans to add to its glamour. When Alex Ferguson became manager in 1986, he spoke to everyone at Old Trafford — from former legends to window-cleaners — and was astounded at the gap between the team's giant self-image and puny results. Still, Ferguson absorbed three tenets of United’s brand: United teams must attack, the world is against United and United is more a cause than a soccer club. He also made himself part of United’s brand. When he said “I am like the keeper of the temple,” he meant that the cause had become almost unthinkable without him.

By the early 1990s, as Ferguson’s United started to win titles, a marketing genius named Edward Freedman was turning the club’s brand into gold. Hardly anyone has heard of Freedman, but he was almost as central to the club’s rise as Ferguson himself.

A Londoner who oversaw merchandise at Tottenham in the 1980s, Freedman had yearned to join United because he realized the immensity of the club’s brand. It appalled him, he told me, that United made so little money from it. When he arrived at Old Trafford in 1991, fans could buy little more than a United scarf and shirt. Pirates did sell T-shirts yards outside the grounds, but not a penny of their takings went to the club. Freedman argued that United had a bigger global brand than Nike. After all, Nike was paying United money to put its name on United’s shirts, instead of United paying Nike.

Soon a megastore opened at Old Trafford. Shops around Britain and later abroad began carrying United paraphernalia. Freedman helped develop a range of over 1,000 United products. In 1992 United had had a commercial income of £1.2 million. By 1997, when Freedman left, its merchandising revenues were £28 million. It wasn’t simply that Freedman had exploited United’s brand; by exploiting it, he helped grow it. Meanwhile, almost all other clubs, either secretly or openly, envied United’s commercial success and tried to copy it. United has marked soccer's history more through its brilliant originality off the pitch than on it. (Its three European titles are credible but don’t even match Ajax or Liverpool.)